


Europa

by Gigi_Sinclair



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/M, M/M, Moons with radiation issues, Pretty sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 04:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21421912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigi_Sinclair/pseuds/Gigi_Sinclair
Summary: "Tom never did come to believe in John's Jesus Christ. But he believed in John, in John's good heart and his kind nature and his honest care for others. In a short time, Tom came to love John fiercely and in a way he'd never loved anybody before. John was Tom's warmth in a frigid place; he was Tom's comfort on a frozen moon. In Tom's mind, that was better than any religion."
Relationships: Silna/Harry D.S. Goodsir (mentioned), Thomas Hartnell/Lt John Irving, Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little (mentioned)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019), The Terror Rarepair Week 2019





	Europa

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Rare Pair Week prompt "Wedding Wednesday", and my Bingo prompt "the world's most perilous of corners", although it is _slightly_ bending that one. And as someone who recently went through a period of nearly two years of not writing a single thing, I really have to thank the organizers of all these great Terror events for the awesome inspiration.

John Irving is a follower of one of the old Earth religions. 

It was the first thing Tom noticed about him, the first time they happened to be in the shower room together. Well, almost the first thing. John wears a little gold cross—a letter T, Tom thought, before he learned of the significance—on a chain around his neck. He assumed it meant John was a history lover, but it's more than that. John takes the religion seriously. He reads the texts daily, and he believes in them.

Tom looks through the mess hall window, at the endless ridges of ice and at Jupiter, looming large as always. It's strange to be here alone, sitting with a cup of lukewarm coffee. Tom should be in the control centre, waiting to hear John's report when he comes back inside. Lieutenant Le Vesconte, however, has made it clear Tom's opinion is not requested. 

Le Vesconte isn't interested in listening to Lieutenant Little, either, who's supposed to be in charge but who is refusing to leave Petty Officer Jopson's bedside. The only people Le Vesconte wants around him now are those who'll tell him what he wants to hear: that they should all get in the shuttle and abandon this place. Tom won't give him the answers he wants. Neither will John, if they aren't the right ones.

Looking around the empty room reminds Tom of the better times. The mess hall is barely lit now, to conserve as much power as possible. Back then, it was bright and warm, a cosy spot away from the brutal cold. Tom remembers sitting here with his brother John one evening, not long after they arrived, playing some new game together. John Irving came in, crossing the mess to sit with Little and Lieutenant Fairholme. 

Tom's gaze slid off the projection in front of them. He didn't think he was staring, but he must have been, because his brother smirked and asked: “Which one do you like the looks of?” 

“What?” Tom could feel himself blushing, which was the worst thing he could do. John's smirk grew.

“Come on, lover boy. You can't fool me.” Tom knew that. He'd never been able to fool John, about anything. “There's nothing wrong with it. People are going to start coupling up, if they haven't already. Better act fast.” Tom followed his gaze to where one of the xenobiologists, Silna, was sitting very close to the head nurse, Goodsir. 

“It's Irving,” Tom admitted. 

“Why?” John didn't sound judgmental, but the question made Tom think. John Irving was handsome and intelligent, but there were plenty of handsome, intelligent people around. They'd barely exchanged two words, and, apart from the necklace he saw in the shower, Tom knew very little about him. Still, there was something about him, some calm, reassuring energy Tom found very attractive. 

“He seems steady.”

“Well, fuck knows you need a guy like that. Want me to get the ball rolling?” Tom's brother pushed back his chair. 

“What? No!” 

“I'm an excellent co-pilot! I'll just go over there and tell him you want a ride on his mobile exploration unit, then, bam, I'll be an uncle in no time.” 

“John!” 

John laughed. They both did, but John's death ended up being what brought Tom and John Irving together. He was an excellent co-pilot, eventually. He would have loved to know that. 

Tom looks up from his watery coffee as the mess hall door swings open, sooner than he expected. John hasn't even stopped to fully change. He's still wearing the white undersuit that goes beneath all the many layers they wear to protect against the cold and the radiation, although that last one seems fairly pointless now. _He looks thin_, Tom thinks. Nobody's had much of an appetite lately, although whether that's due to the sickness or the stress, it's sometimes hard to tell. 

Tom doesn't say anything. John sits beside him, pressing up against him on the upholstered bench. He takes Tom's hand. Tom entwines their fingers and waits. 

“It's as we thought,” John says, at last. Tom knew it already. “There's corrosion in the left thruster cell. I'd say it's beyond repair, with the personnel and materials we have now.” Final confirmation of a death sentence. Another man might have sounded angry about it, might have shouted it or slammed his fist or sworn, but, as always, John is calm. 

“How did Le Vesconte take it?” 

“The way he's taking everything. By denying the truth. He says I'm wrong. His plan is sound. Hickey didn't take the only working shuttle.” There's a touch of bitterness to his voice when talking about Hickey, but it's much less than John has a right to. He and Ensign Hickey never got along, because Hickey is a conniving coward. Taking Mission Captain Crozier hostage and stealing the only possible means of escape were his worst acts of betrayal, but they were by no means his first. “That when we get the other shuttle working,” John adds, “there will be somewhere for us to go.” 

And there it is: the thick icing on the Martian sweet bun of their problems. It's been over five Terran years since they've heard from anyone on either Earth or Mars. 

At first, no one was worried. One afternoon, the control centre received word from James Ross at Mars Base One that, “There may be a break in communication. Stand by.” Tom saw the message. Ross didn't seem panicked; he didn't even sound concerned. When minutes of silence stretched into hours, and then into days, Tom and his team checked and re-checked their own equipment, and found it perfectly operational. The theory that there was somehow some massive technical failure on both planets became less and less likely the longer the silence went on, and was compounded when no further shipments of crew or materials arrived on Europa. 

They're still making daily blind transmissions. They've increased the frequency and urgency of them since they found the cracks in the radiation shield, but they were long ago forced to start thinking about catastrophic possibilities.Tom doesn't like to entertain those thoughts. None of them do. They all have families and friends on the planets.

“John.” Tom looks at him. He has white marks around his eyes where his goggles rested. He reminds Tom of a creature he once saw in a holovid, a “panda.” “Can we read something together?” 

Tom's brother died in a freak accident with a storeroom retrieval robot, before they lost contact with Earth. Tom couldn't have stopped it. Nobody could have, but the guilt and the pain still gnawed at him, consumed him, kept him from doing or thinking about anything else. He doesn't know when, or how, he would ever have escaped it, if John hadn't approached him. 

They were in the fitness room, Tom on a treadmill, running hard and going nowhere. John climbed onto the machine beside him. He jogged in silence for a while, then looked over and said, “Would you like to go have a drink, Ensign Hartnell?” 

A few days earlier, an offer like that from John Irving would have sent Tom's spirits soaring. Now, it just made him feel worse. He upped the speed on the treadmill even more, although he was already running at maximum capacity. “Sorry, sir, I'm busy at the moment.” He could barely get the words out. His legs ached, his lungs burned, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. 

John's beautiful face folded into a frown. Tom saw out of the corner of his eye, but he was too busy grappling with his own emotions to start worrying about other people's. Tom was aware of John stopping his own treadmill, then getting off it. He reached over Tom's arm, onto the control panel of Tom's treadmill, and lowered his speed. 

“You're either going to hurt yourself or break this machine,” John said. Tom clenched his teeth, attempting not to unleash a tirade on a superior officer while wondering, at the same time, if it really mattered if he did. What was the worst they could do? “And I have no desire to face the scorn of Dr. Stanley or the wrath of facilities maintenance tonight.” Tom didn't answer, but he didn't re-adjust the pace. “Please. Thomas.” Nobody called Tom that, not even his mother. “I want to help you.” 

“You can't.” It wasn't personal. Nobody could. 

“Then I know of someone who will.” 

Tom doubted that very much, but he didn't want John to make it an order. He slowed to a stop and stepped off the treadmill. 

“Will you allow me to change first, sir?” His workout clothes were damp with sweat.

“Of course.” John smiled at him. Tom wished he could appreciate it. “And call me John.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, John looked stricken, as if remembering Tom's brother's name. “Or, or Irving, if you prefer.” Tom didn't say anything. In his dreams and his fantasies, he'd always been John. 

Tom wasn't sure what John meant when he said he was a Christian. History was never a strong suit of Tom's. He was always better at the practical stuff, the hands-on. 

“Is that the one with the mummies and the pyramids?” The only other Earth religion he could remember learning about was the one where a god had sex with everything that moved and conceived about three million kids of various species. Was it that one? In any case, he'd never known of anybody who actually followed those religions, or any other. They were a relic of Earth's past, irrelevant today.

“Not quite. Here.” John pressed the hot spot on the back of his own wrist. His implanted tech projected a screen with written text. “I'd like you to have a look at this.” 

Tom read it. _And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen._

John looked at him expectantly. Despite his pain, Tom didn't really want to be rude. Still, he couldn't understand what he was meant to gain from that. 

“I don't really know...”

“It's about believing in something bigger than ourselves.” 

Tom did that already. He believed in the universe, never ending and as awe-inspiring now as it had been when he and John lay in their room in their family pod high above the city, where the stars seemed so close, they could almost reach out and touch them. “It's about believing,” John continued, “we can make it through the hard times, and life is good. That we are loved, so we should show love to other people, and to ourselves.” 

There was an affection in John's eyes that took Tom aback. They'd rarely spoken before this, and only for work related reasons. There was no reason for him to take such trouble with Tom now, not when even Dr. McDonald had done nothing more than give him a link to a holovid about grief and send Tom on his way. Yet, here he was, looking so earnest, so steady, so _genuine_ in his desire to help.

Tom never did come to believe in John's Jesus Christ. But he believed in John, in John's good heart and his kind nature and his honest care for others. In a short time, Tom came to love John fiercely and in a way he'd never loved anybody before. John was Tom's warmth in a frigid place; he was Tom's comfort on a frozen moon. In Tom's mind, that was better than any religion. 

“What do you want to read?” John asks, in the dim, abandoned mess hall. They shared countless meals here, Tom remembers, alone and with their friends. Before one little crack, and then two, and then more changed everything. “Choose whatever you like, Thomas.” 

The default projection screen on Tom's implanted tech is a painting of John's, a picture of the Europa landscape so skilful it reminds Tom, just for a moment, that this place is as beautiful as it is deadly. He flicks his eyes past it and brings up John's holy book, the Bible.

It's long, and some of it, as John says, “reflects a society that no longer exists.” There's a lot he and John haven't read together, and some John hasn't even read on his own. As Tom flicks his eyes through it, John coughs beside him, once, and then again. _It's just a cough_, Tom tells himself. _It's normal._ John is strong, healthy, for now. Radiation sickness will take them all at some point. There's no denying it, and it seems like there's no avoiding it, but neither he nor John has shown symptoms yet. 

Of course, some of the dead, like Dr. McDonald and William Heather, never showed any symptoms at all.

“Here.” Tom stops randomly, before his thoughts can spin out of control. “That one.” 

It's the book of Tobit. Tom has never even heard of it. John reads aloud, his voice reassuringly solid, as Tom leans against him. 

_Then Raguel summoned his daughter Sarah. When she came to him he took her by the hand and gave her to Tobias, saying, ‘Take her to be your wife in accordance with the law and decree written in the book of Moses. Take her and bring her safely to your father. And may the God of heaven prosper your journey with his peace.’ Then he called her mother and told her to bring writing material; and he wrote out a copy of a marriage contract, to the effect that he gave her to him as wife according to the decree of the law of Moses. _

“What's a marriage contract again?” Tom asks, when John's finished. The term is vaguely familiar, but there's so much to this book, it seems like Tom forgets one concept for every new one he learns. 

“It's a joining of two people.” 

“Like sex?” He teases. Sex with John is amazing. While less experienced than Tom, he quickly proved very eager to learn, and naturally talented besides. 

“Not quite.” John laughs. “An emotional and legal joining. A promise you're going to stay with one another for the rest of your lives. Usually there's a ceremony, a wedding, so you can make the promise in front of your family and friends.” Tom has known plenty of couples who stayed together for many years, and plenty who didn't. He's never heard of any type of contract or ceremony. “People of many religions did this, up until a few generations ago.” 

Tom tries to picture it. The mess hall, full of life again. Standing up in front of everybody and promising out loud he will be John's partner for good. John making the same promise about him. He's not sure how he feels about it. On the one hand, it seems a little crass, making a show out of your personal affairs. It's not like nobody knows he and John are together. On the other hand, though, the thought of officially binding himself to John, making a vow in front of everyone they know, makes Tom smile despite everything. 

“Have you known anyone who's done it?” John knew a small group of other Christians on Earth. Tom isn't sure how close they were; he hasn't spoken much about them.

“I've been to a couple of weddings. Not many.” 

On impulse, Tom says, “Would you do a wedding with me?” Belatedly, he wonders if that's something you're meant to ask. Maybe a Christian would just know.

John's cheeks redden a little, which is so attractive, Tom can't regret the question, even if it is wrong. “Yes,” John says. 

Tom leans forward to kiss him the way John likes best, long and slow, like they have all the time they want. 

They don't. Tom can't escape that knowledge. But another thought is just as inescapable: John loves him so much, he would do something like this with him. 

When they pull apart, John coughs into his sleeve. “Usually, there's a priest to perform the ceremony, in a church.” Tom knows about priests. John wanted to be one, he said, until he realized it wasn't a viable career option. “But it's not always necessary. And the idea of a person's parents giving them away is considered outdated.” 

Tom blinks. “Do you mean we could really do it? Just you and me?”

“If you want to.” Uncertainty appears on John's face. “If you don't, it's not...I mean, I don't expect...”

“What do we have to do?”

They stand. Tom likes that. It makes things seem a little more formal. He kind of wishes he was wearing something better than a dark blue jogging suit with mission patches on the sleeves. An iridescent jacket, maybe, and silver overalls of the type that were popular before they came out here. 

John takes both of his hands, squeezing a little.

“In the presence of God,” John says. His voice falters. He clears his throat and continues. “I take Thomas Hartnell to be my spouse, and I promise to be a loving and faithful spouse, so long as we both shall live.” Tom swallows around the lump that has appeared in his throat. “Now you,” John prompts. 

“In the presence of God,” Tom repeats, and for once, he really gets it. Looking at John looking back at him, his eyes full of love, he feels it. Something else is here with them, something he can't define. “I take John Irving to be my spouse, and I promise to be...”

“To be a loving and faithful spouse,” John puts in. 

“To be a loving and faithful spouse, so long as we both shall live.” Tom deliberately doesn't think about how long that might or might not be. 

“Now,” John instructs, “we kiss.”

“I can do that.” Tom eagerly presses his lips to John's. 

Embracing slowly turns into clinging. As the kisses peter out, it becomes the two of them clutching one another, John's arms around Tom's waist and Tom's head on John's shoulder. 

“Do you remember,” Tom says, without raising his head, “Fitzjames' last party?”

John groans, the vibrations echoing in Tom's chest. “Not enough of it.” It was a costume party, because Fitzjames was that kind of person. John went adorably dressed as an “angel”, which very few people recognized, and drank far more than Tom expected him to. So much, John was still singing away happily while the rest of them, shocked, grief-stricken, and wet from the automatic sprinklers, stared at the immolated body of Dr. Stanley. Seven hours later, Mission Captain Crozier made it public knowledge that the radiation shield was cracking. Tom asked John if he'd known before that. He hadn't.

“That's the kind of wedding party we should have. Not the end, of course. But the rest of it.” It's the most fun Tom has had since he's been on Europa. It certainly seemed like the most fun John's had. 

“Let's plan on that, then. A big costume party wedding.” John coughs again. Tom keeps ignoring it. “We'll invite everyone.” 

“Silna and Goodsir,” Tom suggests. They disappeared with Hickey, taken hostage along with the mission captain. 

“Edward and Jopson,” John replies. Tom nods in agreement. They should share this idea of “marriage” with them. He can imagine Jopson being in favour of it, and Lieutenant Little will agree to anything Jopson asks. 

“Le Vesconte,” Tom says. He was a good man. He still is. He's just desperate, and most likely ill. With some people, the radiation takes the mind first. Tom wishes he never had to learn that.

“John Bridgens and Harry Peglar.” Harry, a comm tech like Tom, was one of the first to succumb to the sickness. John, a nurse, went soon after. 

“Dr. McDonald.” 

“Commander Fitzjames.” 

“He would love it,” Tom agrees. Then, “Mission Captain Crozier.”

“He would hate it,” John replies. “But he would come.”

“Of course.” Tom tightens his grip a little. “My brother John.” 

“Yes,” John says, easily. “I would very much like to get to know him.” 

“He would love you.” It's true. They are very different, the two Johns, but Tom's brother would appreciate John for the way he's treated Tom, for the kindness and love he's shown and the way he's kept Tom sane. 

“My parents,” John says, after a pause.

“I would like to meet them, too.” Tom would. John has told Tom about them, how his mother died when he was just a kid, but how his father made sure John and his siblings didn't forget her.

Tom doesn't realize John is crying until there's a hitch of breath, and he pulls back far enough to see the dampness on John's cheeks. It sets Tom off, and he turns away, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his jogging suit.

Fortunately, before this can devolve any further, John says, “There's another part of the wedding, too. A more private part.” 

“What?” 

“The wedding night.”

“What's that?” 

A smile quite unlike any Tom has seen creeps across John's face. “Let me show you,” he says, and links his arm through Tom's. 

It's irrational, but Tom can almost fancy he feels it, the radiation hanging in the air like a cloud as they walk down the darkened corridor towards the sleeping quarters. Still, with John's arm in his, he feels warm, and as safe as he ever does these days. 

“My spouse,” Tom says aloud, trying out the unfamiliar word. John kisses him, once on the cheek. It's so sweet, and so _John_, Tom immediately kisses him back, then resolves to not think about anything else, at least for tonight.


End file.
